1. Field of the Invention
Although many cardiovascular agents are known today, there continues to be a demand for new, improved therapeutic entities. One problem in current cardiovascular therapy is that during the management of cardiogenic shock agents presently used generally have undesirable excessive chronotropic effects and have a short biological half-life requiring constant infusion in a clinical setting for effective treatment. The present invention discloses a new cardiovascular agent and is concerned with a method for using said agent in treating cardiac and coronary insufficiency in warm blooded mammals and is more particularly concerned with methods for increasing the contractility of mammalian heart muscle and increasing the coronary flow by administering an effective amount of the microbially produced salinomycin.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
The successful management of various cardiac insuffiencies such as shock, particularly cardiogenic shock, congestive heart failure or myocardial infarction resulting from acute and chronic trauma to the myocardium has been sought by the use of various therapeutic entities among which can be mentioned dopamine which exerts positive inotropic and chronotropic effects. More recently a new class of therapeutic agents known as ionophores have been shown to exert positive inotropic effects on cardiac muscle. Ionophores are compounds that possess the ability to move ions across membranes. Among the ionophores which have been shown to possess this property are those classified as carboxylic ionophores. U.S. Pat. No. 3,873,715 discloses the antibiotic X-537A (lasalocid), a carboxylic ionophore, and its cardiotrophic properties. Other carboxylic ionophores and descriptions of their cardiotrophic properties are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,893; in the paper Biological Applications of Ionophores by Pressman in the Annual Review of Biochemistry, 45, 501-530 (1976); in the paper New Ionophores for Old Organelles by Pressman and de Guzman in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 227, 380-391 (1974); in the paper Properties of Ionophores with Broad Range Cation Selectivity by Pressman in Federation Proceedings, 32, (6), 1698-1703 (1973); in Abstract 159 of the Abstracts of the 48th Scientific Sessions, Supplement II to Circulation, 52, October 1975, and in Abstracts of the 42nd Annual Scientific Assembly, American College of Chest Physicians, 70, (3), 424 (1976).